Shrinking the world through video conferencing

I’ve used video conferencing before. It was a novelty. Nothing fancy. There, but didn’t think much of it.

Until today.

Critical Mass recently got a Polycom video conferencing unit in the Calgary office. (There are matching units in Chicago and Toronto.) We’ve started using it with my current client for the weekly status meetings.

The client is in Geneva. The video conference makes them seem like they’re in the same room.

It’s trippy. It’s not the best quality and the lag is a little weird, but you get to see everything. Every facial movement (well, that the resolution lets you see, anyway), the mannerisms, everything. And because you can see yourself, it’s also makes you very self-conscious. Also trippy.

Our client is eight time zones and over 12 hours of flying away. And our one hour of overlap a day keeps us somehow connected over a simple IP-based video connection.